Karl Rove on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos,
appearing to say that he could imagine the 2016 GOP nominee embracing marriage equality:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Karl Rove, can you imagine the next presidential campaign, a Republican candidate saying flat out I am for gay marriage?
ROVE: I could.
Big news, right? As Business Insider
wrote, Rove was predicting the potential for a sea change in the Republican party. Stephanopoulos thought it was newsworthy too, devoting a
blog post to it. But just in case you were pleased to see that even Karl Rove can imagine Republicans moving in to the 21st century, don't get too excited just yet, because not long after Stephanopoulos put up his post, Rove demanded
a clarification:
A previous version of this article stated that Rove said he could imagine the next GOP presidential nominee supporting gay marriage. Rove instead had said he could imagine a Republican presidential candidate in the next election supporting gay marriage.
Rove responded in a statement, “I was asked if I could see A Republican presidential candidate supporting gay marriage in 2016 and I said I could (eg, Jon Huntsman endorsed civil unions in 2012). I was not asked if I could see THE Republican presidential candidate or the GOP presidential nominee as the ABC website has said this afternoon.”
So Karl Rove wasn't saying that he could imagine the 2016 GOP nominee supporting marriage equality after all. He was saying that a GOP candidate that didn't have a shot in hell of getting the nomination
might support it. And he was so scared of his party's bigots that he felt compelled to issue a press release just to make sure nobody got the wrong idea.
8:50 AM PT: I love this comment from TooFolkGR:
We Will Never Have Another President
...who doesn't support marriage equality. Male or Female, Democrat or Republican.
The Republicans can nominate who they like, I feel pretty good about my prediction though.